Property Patterns provide an advanced way to facilitate object creation and to enforce enterprise standards centrally. Property Patterns allow you to create a consistent Active Directory environment with objects that correspond to the defined standards.
Using Property Patterns you can define default property values and formatting constraints for objects that are created or modified. Every Property Pattern is created for one object type only and contains constraints and value templates for properties of this object type.
Property Patterns can be used to:
Generate property values
During objects creation you often need to enter the same information for every object. For example, if the company name is the same for all users, you enter the same value for the Company property every time when creating a user. Using Property Patterns you can have this property generated automatically. To do so, you just need to create a Property Pattern for the user object type and specify the name of your company for the Company property.
Also properties can be generated on the basis of other properties. For example, the user full name includes its first name and last name. To avoid entering the same information twice, you can have a user full name generated with the help of value references as follows: %firstname% %lastname%. So, when you enter John as the user first name and Doe as the last name, this user full name is generated autimatically as John Doe.
You may need values to be generated, when objects are only modified or when objects are both created and modified. If the value generation template for a property contains value references (e.g. %firstname%), you can choose whether to generate values only when objects are created or when objects are both created and modified. If the value generation template does not contain value references, values can be generated only when objects are created.
If necessary, generated values can be changed manually.
Specify possible property values
Certain object properties have a limited range of values. To facilitate object creation and avoid variants of the same value, you can specify a list of possible values for such properties. For example, you can specify a list of possible values for the City property, and then just choose the city you need from the list.
You can also specify the values a property must not contain, if you want to avoid using specific values. For example, if some divisions were renamed, you can specify their old names as prohibited values.
Define values format
To enforce corporate standards and validate properties of new or modified objects, you can impose various constraints on property values.
To define such constraints in a simple form, you can specify which characters a property must/must not contain, start with or end with. For example, you can use Must end with constraint to define the format of the user email: Must end with: @yourcompany.com.
To define more complex and detailed formatting rules, you can use regular expressions. A regular expression (regexp) is a pattern used to validate that a string matches the required format. To explain requirements of the regular expression you enter, you can type a custom error message that will be displayed when this regular expression is violated.
The maximum or minimum length of property values can also be defined. For example, you can define the minimum length of the Telephone property, so that it was specified in full.
Value formatting criteria are applied when objects of the specified type are both created and modified.
Mark a property as required
Property Patterns can also be used to set a property as required without changing the Active Directory schema. For example, if you want all user accounts to have the mobile phone specified, you can set the Mobile Phone property as required.
| The options available for value formatting depend on the type of the selected property (binary, boolean, numeric, or textual). |
A Property Pattern is effective only for objects of a specific type included in its activity scope. Activity scope can include or exclude whole domains, members of groups and Business Units, children of containers and organizational units, or specific objects.
You can create several Property Patterns for the same object type and make these Property Patterns effective on different resources. This is useful, for instance, if you need different default values to be generated for objects located in different domains, organizational units etc.
For example, all user accounts of the 'Alpha' company are registered in the 'Alpha.com' domain and user accounts of the 'Beta' company are registered in the 'Beta.com' domain. In this case, you can create two Property Patterns for user objects, one of which will generate the Company property as 'Alpha' and will be assigned on the 'Alpha.com' domain, and the other will generate the Company property as 'Beta' and will be assigned on the 'Beta.com' domain. In such a way, when a user is created in the domain 'Alpha.com', its company name is automatically generated as 'Alpha', and when a user is created in the domain 'Beta.com', its company name is automatically generated as 'Beta'.
Also, the activity scope of several Property Patterns can overlap. If constraints and templates of such Property Patterns are defined for different properties, all constraints and templates of these Property Patterns are applied to the objects included in their common activity scope. For example, if two Property Patterns for user objects are effective on the same resources, but one of them generates templates and imposes constraints on the Company property, and the other on the City property, both properties will be affected by these Property Patterns.
However, if constraints and templates of these Property Patterns are defined for the same properties, such properties are affected by constraints and templates of one Property Pattern only. For example, constraints and templates of two Property Patterns are defined for the City property of user objects. When creating or modifying a user included in the activity scope of both of these Property Patterns, constraints and templates of only one of them are applied to the City property.
If you do not want a Property Pattern to be effective for a certain period of time, you can disable it. The 
icon indicates disabled Property Patterns.
To simplify Property Pattern management, the built-in Property Patterns are provided with Softerra Adaxes. The built-in Property Patterns are created for commonly used object types and contain general constraints and value generation templates. These constraints and templates can be customized to meet your company needs. For more information on built-in Property Patterns, see Built-In Property Patterns.
See Also